Lorne Gunter: CRTC craters to pressure from left on truth-in-news regulation

A Globe and Mail story on the CRTC’s decision last week not to pursue a change to its regulation on disseminating false news is so full of lazy logic and groupthink, it’s hard to believe it ran in a major newspaper. (Oh, who am I kidding. It’s not hard to believe at all. This is exactly the kind off unthinking, pack-mentality journalism that has made the term “mainstream media” a cuss for many people.)

Just look at the headline to start with: “CRTC ditches bid to allow fake news.” That isn’t what they are doing; not a bit. There is no push to allow “fake” news. That’s what lib-left politicians, editors and reporters had convinced themselves the broadcast regulator is doing. Some had even gone so far as to insist the CRTC is looking to allow false news on behalf of the Harper government so the soon-to-launch SunTV can propagandize for the Conservatives. But not even all the anguished, conspiratorial imagination of the left-leaning elites in Canada makes something true – it merely makes it something our smug elites all reassure one another is so. Not the same thing.

Late last year, the CRTC, at the behest of a joint Senate-House of Commons regulatory committee, announced it wanted to change the rules governing news broadcasts on radio and television. The current regulation bars stations from broadcasting “any false or misleading news.” Concerned that this rule would never withstand a Charter challenge because it is too vague and broad, the joint committee told the CRTC to change the regulation so that it applied only to a licensee who “knowingly” broadcasts news that is “false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”

Does that sound like permission to lie in newscasts? However, editorialists across the nation – and opposition politicians, too – convinced themselves the Tories were behind this, otherwise SunTV would never be approved and allowed to go to air.

Never mind that SunTV had already received regulatory approval before the CRTC agreed to make the committee’s suggested change, that the suggestion came from the committee — which included plenty of opposition MPs — or that the committee had been asking for the change for a decade, to no avail. Facts and logic get in the way of a good lefty delirium. So the received wisdom among many Canadian journalists was that the CRTC had to allow “fake” news in order for SunTV – which they love to refer to derisively as Fox News North – to be able to operate in Canada.

The left has lost the distinction between fact and opinion. In their own minds, their opinions must be true because they think them; all else is lies.

The Globe story summarizes the CRTC’s rationale for its change of mind, thus:

“But the CRTC’s call for public input on the proposal resulted in a tidal wave of angry responses from Canadians who said they feared such a move would open the door to Fox TV-style news and reduce their ability to determine what is true and what is false.”

Really? I’m pretty sure what happened is a bunch of lefty activists and supporters swamped the CRTC with distraught calls and the regulator caved, because the regulator wanted to cave in the first place.

Does anyone really believe regular viewers called and emailed the CRTC worried that if it changed its regulation they, personally, would have had reduced capacity “to determine what is true and what is false?” Do you really think the outcry came from ordinary Canadians off all ideological stripes?

I imagine a bunch of unionists, environmentalists, feminists, New Democrats, Liberals, immigration advocates, gay-rights advocates and social activists called up and warned that if the new regulations came into effect, their neighbours and fellow countrymen might be unable to distinguish truth from fiction. But I can’t believe those who contacted the CRTC were worried about their own powers of discernment.

One thing that is consistent across the varying shades of left is that its adherents are almost universally convinced they are not susceptible to misinformation. They see themselves as intellectually and morally superior to those around them. The lamp of knowledge has very clearly been given to them. If only everyone else were as enlightened as they, there would be unity and harmony and flawless policy. To that end, free speech is only okay if everyone ends up agreeing with them. What’s the point of allowing other opinions when theirs are the only ones that are right?

What is inherent in this assertion masquerading as news from the Globe is two things, 1) that our left is sure all of what is broadcast as news in Canada now is 100% true and objective, it contains no bias that might be misleading, and 2) Fox News in the States is spreading falsehoods, unlike the other news services, such as angelic CNN. Therefore, we cannot allow a Fox News North because it would pollute our otherwise pristine media landscape.

What utter hogwash.

Fox News is not gospel. Neither is Rush Limbaugh or any other right-of-centre source. But the same goes for CNN, CBS, PBS, NPR, MSNBC and the left-of-centre sources.

At its core, what worried the left about the CRTC’s regulatory reform was that the Canadian public, if exposed to other points of view, might not choose the so-called “progressive” one. So in their own minds, this becomes about truth versus lies, not about competing opinions. It easier to ban other opinions that way.

If Canadians are given an array of sources and opinions, far from being confused about which are true and which not, they might – gasp! – decide there is more to our public discourse than light disagreements about just how much social democracy is best for the country – a lot or a real lot, which has been the extent of our national debate for the past 40 years (the Post and a few other sources notwithstanding).

As for the CRTC’s contention that it didn’t want to change the regulation in the first place, but gave into the committee because after 10 years it had run out of delaying tactics, can anyone imagine that the regulator called for public submissions precisely because it knew a lefty firestorm would follow and it surmised that would be the best way to stop the committee insisting on the change?